Bus service for women hits snag

PESHAWAR: The much-trumpeted bus service for women that was the first-ever project of its kind in the country proved to be a failed scheme, as the specified buses remained off the road most of the time after less than one month of its launch.

To facilitate woman commuters, who face immense hardships while commuting in the public transport where limited seats are allocated for them, the NWFP Ministry for Social Welfare and Women Development and district government with the help of a local transporter initiated the service purely on self-finance basis.

Three ministers of the provincial cabinet were present on the occasion of launching ceremony of the service on December 15 last. The provincial government largely publicised the project and termed it a major breakthrough for women development. Two China-made buses were introduced to ply the route between Haji Camp and Hayatabad.

However, one bus developed a fault on the second day of the start of the service and has been off the road to date. The second bus develops technical problems off and on and mostly remains at the workshop.

When contacted, Mohammad Naeem, the owner of the buses, told The News that one of the buses went out of order on December 17, and they placed order for the spare parts in China. He said they would fix the fault as soon as the parts were received. He said it was a trial service and such problems might occur in initial phase. He said the buses were in care of a bank for one-and-a-half year because of which could not be maintained properly.

Naeem also said that they agreed to launch the project just as a goodwill gesture. He said they had verbal commitment from the government that their company would get few buses out of a project in which 100 CNG buses would be plied different routes in the city.

Under the said project, the federal government will provide Rs0.7 million per bus as subsidy to the transporters. However, the project is still to materialise despite the fact that provincial government constituted two committees headed separately by Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour and Minister for Information and Transport Mian Iftikhar Hussain to speed up the process.

Naeem said that presently they were bearing a loss of Rs2,500 per day as the charges were Rs3,500 while they were earning just Rs1,000. He said if the government increased the number of women buses, it would certainly decrease the loss as the time gap would be reduced and woman commuters could wait for their specified buses.

When approached, NWFP Minister for Social Welfare and Women Development Sitara Ayaz said she had taken notice of the situation and given a week to the transporter for rectifying the situation. She said the deadline expired on Sunday. She expressed the resolve that the service would not be abandoned at any cost. “We are not going to stop it anyway. If private owners could not run it, my ministry will take charge of it,” she remarked.

The minister hoped that in the current week both the buses would be plying the city roads. She said the province took the lead in the country to start the compressed natural gas buses for woman commuters and they would strive to make the project a success.